Crimes of Persuasion is a must read site covering everything from the Chump Change Charlies up to multi-million dollar ponzi schemes. There is much detail on these kinds of parking lot encounters. The “broken down car” line is probably older than the Model-T.
Like Johnny L.A. said, you have to be pretty thick skinned around here. I usually don’t even listen to the sob story; I just keep walking. Most of the time I can dispense with them before they even get a chance to open their mouths. I can tell what’s coming just by the angle that some walks toward me. Avoid eye contact. Paranoid? Maybe, but I think justified. And don’t think you’re immune if you don’t live in a large city. There are bad people everywhere.
I notice that a lot of men, including some posters to this thread, have the attitude “Hey, I’m a guy. If he pulls any shit I can handle him”, but do you really think you can handle someone with a gun while driving a car at the same time? I don’t think the guidelines are any different for men or women.
Anyway, again, the above link is facinating reading.
Well, it’s not a con if you assume they want money…and I always assume they do. I have no problem at all with giving money to those who are down on their luck. I don’t care what they spend it on. They’re not hurting anyone, and if I can bring a little joy into their lives, even if that joy comes from a bottle, I’m happy to help.
Sounds a bit like a fast-change scam; a guy caught me with a very slick version of this in the south of France once; it was an expensive but ultimately valuable lesson.
Since I’ve met my husband, we’ve helped two people with rides. In both cases, we made the initial offer.
There’s a stretch of road of nearly 20 miles between Texarkana, Arkansas and a small town called Stamps that has literally nothing but farms. You can’t even see the houses from the road for the majority of these farms. One night, while driving to the in-laws, we saw a car parked on the side of the road with the hood up and we could tell there was a person sitting inside (she might’ve had the inside light on.) There are very few lights on this stretch of road, and we decided to stop and see if we could help. In this case, it was a woman in her late teens/early twenties. She would likely, quite literally, have had to sit in her car until morning when she could’ve seen the road enough to start walking to something. We ended up driving her back to her mom’s house.
2*) We were on our way to Disney World. Between Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston is a stretch of interstate with miles between exits. When we passed a broken down car and a little while later, a black man in his mid-to-late twenties was walking down the road, I commented to my husband (since I was driving and he was reading), “I don’t think anyone’s going to stop for him,” because the unfortunate fact was that a lot of people still have prejudices about that demographic. We agreed to go back for him and used the emergency turnaround. He first asked to use a cellphone (which we don’t have) and then offered to ride in the bed (I’m not putting a human being in the bed of my truck while my cooler rides inside.) I think he was nervous about being in the truck with us (the dragging death of James Byrd, Jr. was only a few years old, so I can’t say I blame him). In his case, he would’ve been walking for about three miles in 85 degree weather on concrete before he found a convenience store to make a phone call.
There are a few things to keep in mind regarding both instances of picking up hitchhikers:
They didn’t approach us; we approached them.
There were two of us.
We were armed (we had our .22 pistol with us, because these were long trips). If we hadn’t been, this one probably wouldn’t have changed things in either of these instances for the other reasons, but it was comforting to know we weren’t completely helpless.
Both people were in the middle of nowhere. I’d never give someone a ride when they’re within sight of a public place. (Hey, I never claimed to be particularly altruistic.)
Neither person set off our spidey senses.
*I’ve never told this story before, because it comes off like, “Hey, look at me! I’m not prejudice,” and it makes me uncomfortable to even point it out. But I thought it was relevant to the point I was making to mention both cases where we picked up hitchhikers, and not mentioning his race wouldn’t have made as much sense to the story.
I think it’s sad that have to be people are so suspicious of hitchhikers nowadays.
I used to hitchhike a lot around here until I got my car and license and now I often pick up hitchhikers to pay off the karmic debt. I’m female, but this is the west of Ireland and although it is getting rarer hitchhiking is still quite common. I will pick up male hitchhikers as well if they don’t look dodgy and/or look like they’re young enough to not have access to a car and therefore have a genuine reason for hitchiking. To double your chances of a lift from me, carry an instrument case (I will probably end up giving lifts to El Mariachi but, hey, anything for the starving musicians).
However, I would NOT pick up people who approach me for a lift by trying to corner me with a story as in the OP. Please stick to the old-fashioned thumb approach as I want to make the decision of whether I will give you a lift or not. IMO if something really is that important they could have planned it better in advance and even if the story were true it wouldn’t be worth me taking that big a risk on their account.
So jebert, don’t guilt trip yourself. Even if they spoke the truth this mess was of their own making and isn’t your responsibility.
As a side note, my wife used to hitchhike from Maynooth to Galway with her girlfriends on a Sunday afternoon, just to grab a pint at the Hole in the Wall. This was in the mid- to late-Eighties, and it was never alone; she was always with someone else. She says it was real common then, but she wouldn’t do it now.
I agree. A lot of men have a false sense of security when it comes to this kind of thing. You never know who might have a gun or knife, so picking up a random stranger is just not worth the risk for men OR women.
If you truly want to help out the less fortunate, do it through something like donating to a homeless shelter, something safe through official channels, rather than encouraging hitch-hiking. Hitch-hiking is potentially dangerous for hitch-hiker as well, so you really aren’t doing them a favor in the long run if you encourage them to keep depending on other strangers for rides.
I used to hitchhike everywhere. All the time. Even for only a couple miles. It was just what we did. I didn’t think twice about it then (and I’ve done it a couple times in the last decade as well).
However…you never know where the nutcases are. We were out drinking at a late-night spot years ago. A guy came up to us and said a group of guys was going to beat the crap out of him, and could we give him a ride out of there. So we said, “sure!”. We get in the car (I’m driving, hubby is shotgun, and the dude is in the back seat). Dude leans over to my husband and says, “HEY! Would you mind if I fucked your wife?” Hubby told him to get out of the car or he’d blow his head off. The dude left in a hurry. No, we didn’t have a gun with us, but it seemed to be the persuasive argument.